


Coffeeshop au

by Anythingtoasted, outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Angst, Coffee Shops, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:04:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted, https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts over coffee. [complete]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cas counts out his change.  He always does.  The girl behind the counter rolls her eyes all the way up to the tips of her bangs.  She always does that, too.

“Three fifty-seven,” Cas repeats back to her, and carefully pours his handful of quarters, nickels, gold one dollar coins, dimes, and wheat pennies into her palm. He tries to avoid being punctured by the tips of her nails, which are bright orange and filed into spike-like points.  Cas watches her count his money coin by coin into the register, even though she’d just witnessed as he'd counted out exact change.  He decides his cashier displays an admirable attention to detail.  

She shuts the register and says, “It'll be ready in a sec, okay?”  Before he steps a few feet back from the counter to wait for his coffee, he counts thirteen pennies, nine dimes, and three quarters into the mostly empty jar at her elbow that says TIPS PLEASE AND THANK YOU.  

“Okay,” she says, when he’s done counting.  “Okay. _Wow_. Thanks.”

Cas smiles at her encouragingly.  He hopes she realizes that she earned it.  He watches the pennies sort of roll around and settle in place on top of the quarters and dimes and waits patiently.  He does not wander over to the counter and poke at each individual spoon in the canister of spoons, or the coffee stirrers in the cup of coffee stirrers, or the napkins in the napkin dispenser.  He does not go over to the tables and touch the flowers until their petals fall off.  He knows better now.   He has grown wise in the way of coffee shops.

The man in line behind him does not seem to understand the intricacies of ordering coffees.  He is staring at the blackboard behind the counter with his eyebrows raised.  “Four twenty-five for coffee,” he states, like he’s halfway between outraged and impressed and not quite sure which side of the divide he’s leaning towards.  Cas wonders if the cashier will roll her eyes at him, too.  He is right: she does.  But the man doesn’t pay her any attention.  Instead his eyes flicker over to Cas.

“You ready to order?” the cashier asks.  One orange fingernail is poised over the register.  The man looks back at her.  “Nah,” he says, and backs up a bit to let the next customer get ahead in line.  He winds up standing next to Cas.  “Gimme a minute, okay?”  

The man stares at Cas's shoes for a moment or two before shuffling his feet and then edging around to face him.  “Hey,” he says, and shoots Cas a  crooked half-smile.  “Hey,” Cas answers, and smiles right back.  It’s nice, being smiled at.  Cas thinks it'd be nice if it happened more often.  “What do you figure is the draw to this place?” the man wonders.  

“Coffee, I suspect,” Cas says.   The man turns his head a little and sort of grins into his the collar of his jacket.    

“Okay,” he says, “you got me there.  You-do you come here a lot?”

“When I can,” Cas answers.  What he means is, when the can of change that he empties out his pockets into every morning will allow him to do so.  He has grown surprisingly adept at collecting other people's spare change off the sidewalks and from the parking decks and from behind the vending machines at the hospital.  

“So what did you usually get?” the man asks.  “‘Cause I’m open to suggestions.”

“Just plain coffee, mostly,” Cas says.  “Black.  Except with milk, and no sugar.”  He adds, as an afterthought.  “It’s better than what they have at the hospital.”

The man kind of gets this interested look on his face, at that.  “You work there?”

“Yes.”  Cas doesn’t quite know what to say after that.  The man keeps waving the other customers ahead of him in line.  Cas says, in a sudden burst of inspiration, “You should try the peppermint mocha.”

The man’s smiling at him again.  It’s still nice.  “Oh yeah?”

“It’s festive.”

“Well, thanks,” the man says.  He hesitates.  “My name’s Dean.”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, and puts his hand out.  “I’m Cas.”  

Dean just kind of stares at him for a minute.  Cas waits patiently, but Dean doesn’t move and he’s starting to wonder if maybe he ought to put his hand down.  His arm is starting to get tired.  But then Dean reaches out and grabs his hand. “Nice to met you,” Dean mumbles, muffled slightly by the way he’s muttering down at his chest.  

Cas does what he has heard people on television call _making eyes_ at the steaming coffee cup waiting for him on the counter.  He suspects, but isn't entirely sure, that Dean is making those same eyes at _him._ “My order’s up,” Cas says, and gently pats Dean’s hand.  Dean finally lets go.

“Yeah,” Dean says.  “Okay.  Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“That would be nice,” Cas agrees, and edges slightly toward his coffee.  Dean’s still staring at him when he heads to the door.  

\--

Dean, he learns, is a regular.  Cas considers himself a regular too, but he doesn't think that even he is as regular as Dean.  Dean is there two days later when Cas walks into the coffee shop, humming the Foldgers coffee jingle to himself under his breath.  Dean is sitting at a table in the corner.  He aims a small little wave in Cas’s direction.  Dean, Cas notices, is drinking another peppermint mocha.  It makes him smile.  He orders a black coffee with milk and sits down a few tables away, by the window.  He can see Dean.  Dean can see him.  They sort of awkwardly drink their coffees and refuse to look each other in the eye. 

Dean is there the next day, too.  Cas stops before walking through the door and thoughtfully spends $1.25 in quarters on a newspaper.  He’s never been particularly convinced of the utility of newspapers before.  Certainly he has never deigned to spend money on a newspaper before.  He gets all his news from cable tv.  But he discovers that not only are newspapers useful for drinking coffees behind, he also has a gift for crossword puzzles.  It’s not so bad, being glanced at by Dean, not as long as he can temper those glances with the occasional gaze back down to _five across_. 

Cas thinks about coffee and Dean the rest of the week.  He finds seven quarters, five nickels, two dimes, and thirteen pennies, which all go into his pockets.  He investigates the corners behind the vending machine in one of the waiting rooms and manages to find five more quarters.  He thinks that maybe if he skips coffee tomorrow, then he might have enough to pay for Dean’s coffee too the next day.  Even if Dean orders a pumpkin spice latte like he did two days ago, though it might set Cas back in spare change considerably.  

Cas empties out his pockets in his change jar when he gets home, then opens up the lid and sort of squints inside.  He’s thinking he might have enough change for Dean's coffee tomorrow, after all.  He puts the jar back where it belongs, feeling positively uplifted, and goes outside to feed the cats.

He’s begun to feel a bit conflicted about the cats.  He would like to hang a bird feeder on his apartment's back porch, but he suspects that the cats harbor certain snackable intentions towards any freeloading robins or sparrows that might be lured by offerings of birdseed.  The cats are waiting for him.  They look up at him expectantly with wide, hopeful green and amber and light blue eyes.  He pours cat food in the blue-and-white china dishes he leaves outside for the cats' particular use, and sits on the porch stoop and watches the cats crowd each other around the dishes.  

He tells the black-and-white cat, “I met someone.”  She looks up from the dish and gives him a look that suggests things not lawful to be uttered.  “I think he is nice,”  he adds, but she does not seem impressed.  The small calico twines around his legs, but she darts away when he reaches down to pet her head.  He doesn’t mind.  None of his cats let him pet them.  They seem mostly content to eat the food he provides and malinger on his back porch, staring at him through his windows.  They're not really his cats, after all.  They are strays.  He only feeds them.  He does feel a certain amount of kinship with them, though.  Cas wonders on occasion what it would be like to have something of his own.

"If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell another soul?" he asks the cats solemnly.  "I think Dean might like me."  He doesn't mention that he thinks it's just as likely that Dean is planning to track him down and mug him.  Or steal his identity.  But the cats don't need to know that.  "I'm glad we had this talk," he says, and goes inside to fill up their water bowl.  

  --

Dean's standing by the counter the next day, performing what Cas has come to think of as his shuffle of indecision, brought on by the pricing schedule of independent coffee shops and by what Cas believes to be Dean's personal agony over making small choices.  There isn't a line, so Cas feels justified in sneaking up to stand there beside him.  “Allow me,” he says, and has the satisfaction of seeing Dean turn his head and look at him like he's something else, something new and previously undiscovered by humankind, something completely out of the realm of possibility.  He discovers in himself the desire to continue making Dean look at him that way.  He’s never seen Dean look quite like that before.  

“Five forty-seven,” the cashier tells him.  So it _had_ been another pumpkin spice latte, then.  Cas counts out the change carefully in the palm of his hand.  While he’s wondering what makes him think he might know what Dean’s smiles usually look like, Dean turns back towards him and touches his elbow.  “Thanks,” Dean says, quiet.  He clears his throat once or twice.   “That’s real nice of you, Cas.”

“I wanted to,” Cas tells him. 

Dean says, off-hand, "I already got a table.  We could share.  If you want."

Cas says, "I think I'd like that," and Dean looks at him like he's just seen the sun come up.  

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Cas struggles with the chair, its legs rasping awkwardly against the floor. When he finally sits down he gets his jacket stuck, hooked, on the back of the chair, almost overturning his coffee. Dean reaches carefully across the table to steady it before it falls.

He finally seats himself opposite Dean, and when he glances up from his cup Dean is looking at him, mouth drawn into a soft, contemplative line.

“You like it? The coffee?”

Cas takes a molten-hot sip before he nods. “Yes,” he smiles, carefully – smiling is something he’s still trying to get the true hang of, practising in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, trying to do it more and more often. He smiles at the cats, but of course they don’t smile back, so he’s not sure if he’s doing it right.

Dean eyes him for a second, which makes him think the smile was a mistake – but then his own face splits into a funny little grin, and he looks down and covers his face with the hand not holding his coffee, so Cas can’t see his eyes. “Jesus,” he mutters softly, then lifts his gaze to Cas’ again. “I’d ask if you come here often, but I think I already know the answer.”

Cas shrugs, watching Dean’s face. He is extremely expressive, in a way that Cas is not; his face twitches when Cas talks, and his smiles flash up and then are gone again, eyes often lowered, but always flicking back up periodically as they talk.

Despite this action in his gaze, though, Dean is quiet with Cas sitting opposite him, and he drinks his coffee slowly, lifting it to his mouth, then almost immediately putting it down again. Several times, he looks as if he’s going to speak, but the expression is gone so quickly, flickering away, that Cas can’t ever be sure he didn’t imagine it.

Cas himself is inexperienced with this sort of interaction, and tries to take cues from Dean; but Dean gives him nothing to draw from either, eyes soft on Cas’, words slightly fumbling. Cas has seen, on television, one person stretch their hand across a table and lay their open palm atop someone else’s spread hand, but when he tries it Dean is nothing like the people on television. He looks up as if someone has struck him, eyes wide, and then he just looks sad. He makes no move to turn his hand over, but he doesn’t pull it away, either. He drinks his coffee, and Cas does the same with his own, and as their cups empty Cas’ palm starts to sweat, but he leaves it where it is, all the same.

The coffee shop is abuzz with noise and smell, so much that it’s almost overwhelming; he can smell the drinks, hear people talking, laughing; the click of heels, the soft _shush_ of shoes over the glass-shined wooden floor, the thrum of fingers tapping on a table, wavelike. In all of this, Dean looks at him, and drinks his coffee, and occasionally smiles. Cas is fascinated by the feel of his knuckles, so close to the surface, so clearly just skin over bone.

When he finishes his coffee, Dean sets his cup down. His mouth twists, unsure, and Cas thinks this is it – his drink finished, this is the end of their interaction, and Dean stands, as if to confirm this suspicion; but then he stops. He tucks his chair in around the empty cup and stands behind it, hands braced on the seatback. “Where d’you live?” he asks, and Cas marvels at how he is constantly misinterpreting Dean’s actions. He wonders if this was a _date._

Cas tells him, and Dean smiles, and before Cas can hope to categorize what kind of interaction they just had, Dean is reaching into his jacket, pulling out a pen, and leaning over the table with his fingers wrapped around Cas’ wrist, writing a phone number over the back of his hand. He straightens up, then, and looks pleased. Cas says “We should do this again,” at the same moment that Dean opens his mouth, and Dean says nothing, and nods.

“Yeah, we should,” he agrees, and leaves the coffee shop behind. Cas watches him go.

\---

There’s a new cat on the back porch when he gets home – a shaky-legged tabby, eyes bug-wide and blue, tongue poking from between its teeth when it peers up. Cas makes a note to get another bowl just in case he – the tabby - decides to make this a regular thing, and sits outside as the cats nudge each other to get at the food, their tails raised high, feet making tiny _scritchscratch_ noises on the floor. Cas talks to them about Dean, and doesn’t mind that they don’t talk back, but finds that he misses the rumble of someone else’s voice, their thin mewls pale by comparison.

\---

Cas has a phone at home, but no cellphone, and thus he spends a lot of his time wandering around the floors of his apartment after Dean drinks coffee at the table with him.

When he got home afterwards, he immediately scrawled the number on a piece of paper in his kitchen, and pinned it to the refrigerator. Since then, he has alternated between staring at it and dialling half of it, only to replace the phone in its cradle.

He likes Dean, he wants to see Dean; he thinks, all evidence considered, that Dean wants to see him, too. But there is something terrifying about that direct contact, one single line connecting him to Dean, and the largest of his terrors is that the voice on the other end might interpret him as _needy,_ or _desperate,_ or _creepy._ He knows these things are a risk, if only through having gleaned them from the medium of television (also google searches, which after a number of puzzling results he has learned not to trust implicitly).

So he looks at the phone, and the phone looks back. He gets back to the apartment, he feeds the cats. He turns on the television almost immediately and is lulled into relaxation by the droll murmur of voice upon voice upon voice filling his home; and he stares at the number etched in black on white paper on his fridge, and he stares at the phone.

It takes the worst day to finally push him to do it. He gets home in a wake of chain catastrophes; fights at the Shelter, an altercation with a bus driver when he didn’t have enough change to pay, fingers bitten bitter cold from the wind on their gloveless skin.

He swings into the apartment unruly, hair whipped back with the wind, cheeks burnt and stung red by the weather. The apartment is cold, heatless since the morning, and the cats are waiting on the porch callously, tails wound uncaring in the air.

He goes out to sit with them as they eat, but the jar of pennies in his house is dwindling, and on a day like this – when the weather hates him, when his luck is down to barest drips – it is hard to believe in his Goodness, though he tries.

He thinks mulishly, even as the cats wind around his legs, that for all he knows, their affection only extends as far as the circumference of a food-dish. He thinks, with the kind of clarity that can only come from a godawful day, that Dean’s might not.

He dials slowly, carefully, making sure not to press the wrong buttons. The phone rings exactly five times before Dean answers on the other end, and Cas finds himself twirling the cord around his finger as he talks, not really knowing why.

“You okay?” Dean asks immediately, on the other end, and Cas wonders why, but doesn’t ask.

“Fine,” he says, and eyes the jar of pennies, the tiny flashes in silver within, the scant few notes. He decides he doesn’t much care for sensibility – today, at least. “Do you want to come over, and order Chinese food?”

The highlight of his day is that Dean doesn’t even pause before he says yes. 


	3. Chapter 3

If this is a date, and Cas rather thinks it might be, then he supposes he ought to pick up the apartment a bit.  There isn’t much to do.  He goes into the main room and tosses his pillows and sheets on the floor and folds his bed up and into a couch again.   He has the vague idea that beds are not a requirement for second dates, unless there is some intention of reaching _third base_.  Whatever that might be.

He returns the the cushions to their rightful place and lines up the pillows in a neat arrangement, and spreads the red-white-and-blue starry quilt over the worst of the stains. The quilt might be worn and faded, and the stuffing might be coming through the gaps in the stitching, but Cas thinks it looks nicer anyways, tucked in the corners of the gray couch.  He puts the sheets and the rest of the pillows in the pantry for safekeeping.  He is fairly confident Dean will not discover the sheets there. There isn’t anything else to do with them.  He has seen, in the Martha Stewart magazines he reads sometimes in the hospital waiting rooms, that these things ought to be stored in a linen closet, linen closets being, as far as he can ascertain, a luxury that his apartment lacks.  

Cas opens up a kitchen drawer and pulls out the stack of menus he’s collected recently.  Tamara at the hospital had turned him on to the idea of takeout.  He finds the menu for the Chinese restaurant a few blocks away and separates it from the rest, and he sets takes it into the living room and sets it down on top of the coffee table.

He glances down at his clothes.  He’s not entirely certain what counts as date clothes, but he has limited options as far as clothes goes.  At the moment, at least.  He is wearing jeans, which seem appropriate.  He is wearing a sweater.    He has the funny feeling that maybe this sweater is not date-appropriate.  Tamara had chuckled the first time she’d seen him wear it to the hospital, and ever since then Cas has had a slight air of unease about wearing this sweater away from home.  He’s not sure why she’d laughed. It is just a sweater.  

He goes to the bathroom and straightens up the bottles of shampoo and bodywash and deodorant on the counter, and stares at the sweater in the mirror.  The uneasiness doesn’t disappear.  He thinks it has something to do with the large button eyes of the reindeer sewed into the fabric.  Their reflections gaze back at him.  He concedes that the sweater is fairly alarming.   He pulls it off.  The long-sleeved shirt he’s wearing underneath will have to do.  He wads up the sweater and stuffs it in the cabinet under the sink, where it will probably pick up the odor of roach motels.  

He stands there for a moment, trying to think.  He’s not quite sure what else needs to be done.   His apartment doesn’t look much like the ones in the magazines he’s seen. He doesn’t have a table or chairs.  He doesn’t have picture frames or decorative lamps.  He tries to think of the Martha Stewarts again, and then he has it.  Tea lights, Cas thinks.  Yes.

He finds candles in one of the other drawers in the kitchen, and a box of matches beside the sink.  He places the candles carefully around the television stand and on the coffee stand, and uses up the box of matches trying to get the first candle lit.  He turns out the overhead lights in the kitchen and main room. There, he thinks, satisfied.  Much nicer.

There isn’t really anything left to do.  He sits on the couch and tries not to wrinkle the quilt.  He gets up and goes to the front door, poking his head outside.  No Dean.  Oh, well.  He goes back inside and rearranges the couch pillows.  Then he goes out to the back porch.  

The cats are waiting, even though he’s only just fed them.  “I have a date,” he reports.  “With Dean.”   One of the cats crowds round his legs, and when he reaches down, it pushes its head against his fingers. and rubs its whiskers on his palm.  The newest cat, Cas notices, the shaky gray tabby.  It’s still a kitten, really. Cas strokes him down his back, with some wonder.  None of his cats have ever allowed him to pet them before.   

“Oh, I like you,” he says.  The tabby makes wistful noises at him.   “I don’t think I’m allowed to let you inside,” he explains sadly.  “I signed a rental agreement, you know.”   The kitten tucks his tail around his feet and regards him solemnly.  Then the doorbell is ringing, faint but unmistakable.    “ _Dean_ ,” he tells the cats, and hurries through the apartment to answer the door.   

Dean’s waiting for him.  Dean sticks his hands in his pockets when Cas opens the door.  "Hey," he says, and grins. 

“Hey,” Cas says back. 

"Can I come in?" Dean asks.

"Oh." Cas steps away from the door.  "Of course."  

He's not sure what Dean thinks about his apartment.  It's hard to tell.  Dean takes off his coat and since there's nowhere to hang it up, he just bundles it under his arm.  He glances around the living room, at the television and the couch and the tea lights.  His smile gets a little funny when he sees those candles.  The edge of his mouth goes kind of crooked.  "Chinese food and candlelight," Dean says.  "Pretty romantic for a second date, Cas."  He sounds like he's joking, but Cas can't be sure.

“The tea lights,” Cas says, feeling alarmed.  “They’re too much.”  

"No, no," Dean says. "I really like them, Cas.  I really do.  This is great."  He holds up a pastic bag.  "I brought beer," Dean says.  He sounds sort of apologetic.  "Don't know if it really goes with Chinese food.  But..." He shrugs.  

"I don't know why it wouldn't," Cas tells him diplomatically.  He's not sure he likes beer.  He can't remember if he does or not.  It must've been a long time since he's had any.  Well, he's open to trying new things.  Third base, for instance.  He's definitely interested in whatever third base might entail.  He takes the bag from Dean.  "I'll put it up."  

Dean's standing by the television when he returns, staring at the National Geographic calendar hanging above it. It's still stuck on the March picture even though it's December now, a photograph of the Grand Canyon at sunset.  "You ever been there?" Dean asks.  There's something strange about his voice. It's gone soft and kind of sad.  

"No," Cas says.  "I'd like to go there sometime.  I've always wanted to.  For as long as I can remember."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Me too."  He sort of sighs then, letting out a long breath.  Cas thinks about touching his shoulder, but he doesn't quite dare.  Instead he passes Dean the menu.  "What would you like?"

It's almost like Dean turns his quiet sadness off like a light.  He flips open the menu.  "General Tso's chicken," he says, and grins endearingly.  "What do you like?"

" _Everything_ ," Cas says feverently.  "Chinese is my favorite."

"I like that you have favorites," Dean says.  Cas thinks that that is a remarkably strange thing to say. It's a good thing he likes Dean.  

"I'm not put off by your strangeness," Cas informs him pleasantly.  

Dean is still laughing when their food shows up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys it's pastrymisha, sorry to leave you waiting so long, and then come back with this paltry offering! I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless ♥

Cas remembers that he doesn’t actually like beer about half-way through his first, but he has another anyway, draining it to the last drop.

It is easy to keep drinking, to keep talking. Cas eats all the prawn crackers; he doesn’t know if he likes the taste, not really, but he likes the way they go from crunchy to soft in his mouth; the sharp, echoing crunch they make beneath his teeth. He tells Dean this – he does not mention how the tealights make the lines of his face seem soft and unutterably beautiful – and Dean just laughs, and punches him gently in the arm for eating the whole bag.

It is dinner, but no movie. They flick through the channels on Cas’ less than state-of-the-art TV set, but his relatively few channels yield little, and eventually Dean gives up, leaving a laugh-track sitcom running, pleasant burble in the background. Cas is trying to watch himself, trying not to say anything that makes Dean’s eyes go half-lidded, his lips part; but as the beer fills him up, making his head swim, it gets harder and harder.

Dean has the beer too, more than Cas, but still doesn’t splay himself on the couch like Cas does. He doesn’t put his head in Cas’ lap.

The sitcom ends; Dean is running his hand through Cas’ hair, but when Cas looks up at him, he stops. The air smells of the Chinese food, _strongly,_ meat and grease and something else that makes Cas’ stomach rumble again, though he has only just recently eaten. It is that noise that stirs Dean from carding his hands against the crest of Cas’ skull, and he stops the motion.

“Do you want to go outside?” Cas asks him. He has seen people kiss on balconies, under the stars.  Perhaps it is outside that is the common denominator; perhaps the solution to this silence that has spread between them like skin over a drum, is to take Dean outside and kiss him until there is nothing more to do but talk.

He gets up before Dean can refuse, and Dean follows him, hands in pockets, as Cas sways a little and unlocks, fumbling, the door to the back porch. The door swings in, not outwards, so when he pulls it open he almost hits Dean with it, and when he turns around to laugh and apologise Dean is close, too close, and he smells like the Chinese food. Cas steps backwards, out onto the porch, and almost crushes the smallest cat beneath his foot; he apologises to it, crouching, as Dean sidles out after him.

“Does he have a name?” Dean asks, voice so quiet Cas can hardly believe they’re right next to each other. He looks up.

“No. He’s not mine.”

“Y’know,” Dean starts, then seems to think better of it; then glances up at the darkening sky and speaks again. “There’s this book I read once that says cats have got a bunch of names. Like, the ones we give them, and their true names, and stuff,”

Cas gets to his feet, palm leaving the cat’s head. “I like that,” he says, “I don’t like to think of them as nameless.”

“How many d’you have?” Dean talks slowly, makes little eye contact. He glances out at the air ahead; back at Cas, back at the sky, repeat. It is a little unsettling.

“I don’t know,” Cas says honestly. “Seven, I think.”

“That’s a lot,” Dean laughs. Cas sees that he is trembling.

“Hold on a second.” He ducks back inside the apartment, runs over, bare feet making noise, to the pantry where he stashed all the blankets. He drags one out – things fall to the floor, clattering; he is drunker than he realised – and runs back with it, triumphant. When he drapes it over Dean’s shoulders he says, “One second,” again, and fetches another beer from inside.

Dean has been standing stock-still at the porch railing all this time. He submits to the blanket – he looks at Cas strangely when he puts it over his own shoulders, too.

“Now it’s not so cold,” Cas says, smiling, but Dean is still shaking. He reaches over, past Dean’s chest, to pull it tighter around his shoulder. While he is doing it, their faces are very close; Dean breathes strangely, like he’s been running.

“Thanks,” he says. Cas wonders why he always sounds so bewildered.

“Do you know any of the constellations?” Cas asks him, looking up at the sky, settling himself again.

“No, I don’t think so. I know the north star,” Dean says, pointing it out. “That’s it. What about you?”

“I don’t know any,” Cas replies, and he’s about to ask if Dean would like some of his beer; but Dean has turned to him, and Dean is kissing him, and that makes it kind of difficult to speak.

Dean pulls away. Cas has been kissed before, he is certain, but he doesn’t know if he felt as warm as this after previous kisses.

Dean says sorry, and Cas doesn’t really know why, but he doesn’t ask. “Will you sleep over?” he asks; Dean looks stricken.

“Cas, I don’t-” he pauses. “Just in the same bed? Just sharing?”

Cas had meant it as a double-question; one of those things people say to one another, when really they mean something else; but Dean looks so hopeful, so earnest, that he simply nods. “Yes,” he smiles. “Help me with the sofabed?”

Dean looks vulnerable with Cas’ blanket around his shoulders, like Cas has found him out here, just another animal. His eyes are wide, but they stay fixed on Cas’ face. He laughs, before he says “Okay.”

They stay out on the porch for half an hour more; Cas finishes the beer, Dean is mostly quiet. After they put out the sofabed, and Cas gets the blankets and pillows, makes it a bed again, Dean lies beside him, turned to face him.

“Would you like me to hold you?” Cas asks him, out of genuine interest, and because he would like to. Dean’s intake of breath is enormous.

“Yeah, Cas. Yeah, please,” he is still shaking. Cas wonders if he has left a window open, somewhere, or if Dean has a cold, or a chill.

With the blankets pulled up to their chins, he scoots close. He wraps both his arms around Dean’s body; he slots his knees behind Dean’s. Dean releases that breath in one long, unbroken stream; Cas feels the heave of his shoulders, warm against his chest. 


	5. Chapter 5

He is aware of his dreams. There are mornings when he will wake up shivering, with tiny pinpricks of fear all over his skin, he will wake up with wet eyes and unsteady fingers, still reaching for something to hold.  There are mornings when he will wake up warm and comforted, hearing his name spoken by a quiet voice, a voice that he knows is meant for him and him alone.  He never remembers what he dreams about.  Sometimes he can remember a great fathomless gray something, or nothing, and with it comes a curious feeling of joy that always fades away by the time he’s had his second cup of coffee.  

He wakes up and turns over.  He is alone under the quilt.  Dean isn’t there, and he opens his eyes.  Dean’s jacket is gone, his boots are gone.

He wonders if Dean left a note.  People leave notes, he knows.  He gets notes at the hospital, taped on the door to the equipment closet.  He gets up and looks around.  But Dean has not left a note.   Dean still has my number, he tells himself.  Maybe he’ll call.  He even drags the phone outside, trailing tangled cord all over the patio and between the cats’ dishes, but the phone doesn’t ring.  Dean doesn’t call.  

—

He goes to the hospital cafe at midnight for coffee. He’s standing in front of the counter, counting his change, and he looks up and oh, oh, it’s Dean.  Dean sitting at one of the tables by the wall, his eyes closed, propping his head up with his arm.

He doesn’t quite know what to do. So he orders two coffees.  One black.

He puts one down in front of Dean.  He doesn’t sit down.  He isn’t sure if Dean wants him here.  But he puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean looks up.

“Cas?” he says.  His voice is hoarse.  Like he’s been crying.  Or trying not to.

“I got you coffee,” Cas says.  It’s the only thing he knows to say.  

Dean is staring at him, the way he does.  He doesn’t look at the coffee, but he says, “Thanks,” and then, “What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Cas tells him gently.  

“You work-” Dean’s eyes narrow. He looks over Cas, at his uniform, at his nametag.  He smiles, just a little.  “You’re a janitor?”

“Yes,” Cas says comfortably.  Most people just say Oh.  Then go on to talk to someone else. But Dean smiles and touches the tip of his finger to the name tag on his uniform.  “Are you all right?” Cas asks.

“I’m fine, I just—” Dean takes a breath.  “My brother.  He’s here.”

“I know,” Cas says.  “I cleaned his room.”

Dean blinks.  “You did?”

“He looked at me,” Cas says, “the same way you do sometimes. He knew my name.”  Dean doesn’t smile.  “Did I do something wrong?” he asks, and Dean turns his head.  

“No, buddy,” he’s saying.  A muscle jumps in his cheek.  ‘You didn’t- Cas, you didn’t do anything wrong.  Not one thing.”

“I made you leave,” he says.

Dean does something that surprises him.  He puts his head in his hands.  “That’s not true,” Dean says.  “There is nothing you could have done to make me go,” Dean is saying.  “Cas—” he puts his head in his hands and sits very still for a while.  “My brother,” Dean says, “is dying.  And I don’t have anybody.”

“There’s me,” Cas says, and Dean looks up at him then.  

“I’m losing him,” Dean says.  “I’ve lost you.”

“I’m right here,” Cas says.

Dean laughs hollowly, from inside his cupped hands.  “You’re not the same.”

Cas considers.  So he used to be something else.  Someone that meant something more to Dean, someone that had once meant something more to him than he means now.  He wishes he hadn’t lost whatever it was. It must have been important, if Dean could miss it so badly.

“I can’t take you away,” Dean says. He sounds wild, and for a moment Cas is reminded of those almost-remembered dreams, that private language.  “You have a job.  You have a home.  Hell, you have cats.”

“You don’t have to take me away,” Cas says.  “I could take you.”  

 —

He takes Dean back to his apartment.  He parks Dean’s car right by his door.  He takes Dean’s duffel bag out of the trunk.  He brings Dean inside and takes off his jacket and Dean stares round the apartment like he’s never been there before.  

“Dean,” he says.  “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and sways.

"Of course you are," Cas says.  There is something exceedingly familiar about this particular routine.

Cas takes him to the bathroom and gives him a towel.  He turns on the faucet and helps Dean out of his shirt when his fingers are trembling too hard for him to do it himself.  Dean is looking at him.  There’s something funny about his eyes.  He looks the way Cas sees people look at the hospital, walking out of rooms and heading for waiting rooms.  Like they don’t know if they will ever see that person again, and then they did.  It’s always a miracle.  Now Dean is looking at him like he is one, and it turns Cas’s infinitesimally small world turn on its head. He unbuttons Dean’s shirt, one by one, and Dean is standing there with a long bare slice of his chest revealed and he is still looking at Cas like that.

“I’ll get you clean clothes,” Cas says finally. “I’ll leave  them by the door.

“Okay,” Dean says.  He looks awed.  “You’re so nice,” he says.  “You are so nice,”  and Cas is strangely touched.   

Cas closes the bathroom door firmly and gently in his face.

When Dean returns, his hair is still wet.  Cas is sitting on the couch holding something in his hands.

“What’s this?” Dean asks blearily.

“A key.”

“Hey, a key.”

“To my apartment,” Cas elaborates.  ”It’s for you.”

“You don’t even know who I am.”

“Yes I do,’ Cas says, and Dean looks up with something like hope in his eyes.  “You talk to strangers. You sit with your brother every night.  You are kind to me.”   He will never admit it, but Cas sees the knowledge slowly fill him up, take him over.  Dean has come to see that everything he used to know about whoever Cas used to be is gone.  “You didn’t think you’d find me,” Cas says.

“Cas…” Dean draws a breath. “I never stopped looking for you.”

“I’m glad,” Cas says, because he is.  He reaches across the couch and takes Dean’s hand.  “Now, Dean,” he says.  “I wanted to ask you something about third base.”

“Third base?” Dean asks.

“Yes,” he says.  “And I’m not talking about baseball.”


End file.
